I've Never Been a Fan of Change
by Blake Wales
Summary: One of my creative writing prompts for class, based on the requirement to start with the sentence: I've never been a fan of change. (Told from Bowser's POV).


I've never been a fan of change. Life can give you everything you could ask for, and yet none of the good stuff ever lasts forever. It's not fair - the way things keep changing in my life. I work so hard to lay my life out in front of me, and it's always working so perfectly - until change comes along and takes it all away from me, leaving me to rebuild my life's work all over again.  
  
Let's see if you can sympathize with my cause. I wandered into the biggest town you could possibly imagine. It was complete with man-eating lizards, giant grumpy turtles that bumped into people, houses made of giant mushrooms, with short and fun-loving mushroom-headed citizens, and a vast network of green pipes used as transportation between neighborhoods. It was a beautiful and wonderful life. Each neighborhood had its own unique lay of the land. For example, there was an ocean-like realm of islands that invited tourism from all across my kingdom. Another was a sweltering and romantic desert land, boasting great pyramids, oases, and more giant green and red-shelled turtles for the tourists to stare and awe in wonder at.  
  
I couldn't resist. Who wouldn't want to be ruler of all the land, which is so great and beautiful? I took control of each neighborhood and built great castles to protect them from invaders. I sent out rowdy but loyal police officers, as well as the peace-keeping giant upright turtles, also called koopa-troopa's, to make sure the civility of the land was not disturbed from its fragile balance. I always took pleasure in seeing my commanding officers survey their neighborhoods with their shiny new airships. I couldn't figure out why, however, our lands never received many tourists. Maybe it was the décor in our castles. Anyway, besides a general lack of commotion in the mushroom-people's villages, everything was just peachy.  
  
One day things started to go wrong. A pair of Italian plumbers, the Mario brothers, entered my world. I already knew their name, since they had come to my kingdom no more than two years ago that very day. They ravaged through my land, setting fire to my police officers and shooting down my airships. It didn't end there, though. Once they finished annihilating all my influence in one neighborhood, they would move on to the next. They were taking my dream world away from me.  
  
One by one, the twin plumbers gave my other realms the same fate they let loose on the others. I could only watch in despair and anger as the two fireball-flinging, mushroom-eating, self-proclaimed 'heroes' left behind a trail of destruction and chaos on their way to my doorstep.  
  
On their last visit through my own neighborhood they laid waste to it in the same manner, but I knew their weakness. I laid a trap for them in my castle. It wasn't enough. No matter how much I lay in their paths, they always bounced, flew, or swam up and around the obstacles. They exiled me from my rule, only to set free an evil wretch that I had imprisoned for her evil deeds. As the villains celebrated their second victory over me and my allies, we set to work to rebuilding our kingdom.  
  
Year after year, I rebuilt a far more vast empire of peace keepers and police officers, and captured a few of the villains' closest allies for leverage. Yet no matter what lay in their way, no matter what I could do to try to stop them, the plumbers returned to wreak havoc on my kingdom, intent on returning the wretched witch back to her place on her dark throne. My dreams of peaceful rule over the great and beautiful realm were squashed again and again. I could never keep a firm control on my throne.  
  
Wherever I reappeared to rebuild my great kingdom, the Mario Brothers would be there to depose me. So you see life hasn't been very fair to me. I have never held reign over the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom for any more than a few weeks before those accursed plumbers have foiled my plans. In a nutshell, I've never been a big fan of change. 


End file.
